Warning: This piece contains spoilers for Nosferatu.
Wear a Gothic costume and hold the cross close. Because Nosferatu is coming to theaters. Director Robert Eggers’ remake of the 1922 classic film has been a long time coming since it was first announced in 2015. Clearly a passion project for the filmmaker, the film opened in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day to generally positive reviews. , including a 9/10 rave review by IGN.
However, despite much praise for the film’s performances, cinematography, and period-setting design, Nosferatu continues the tradition of adaptations and reworkings of the original Dracula novel by undermining key elements of the original work. . The problem is so endemic that each edition over the decades has reflected changes in adaptation, completely overwriting certain aspects of the book in the public imagination.
So today, let’s take a look at what those changes are and why the original novel has yet to be made into a definitive film.
ancient evil
Let’s start with a quick refresher to make sure everyone is on the same page. Dracula, by Irish author Bram Stoker, is a Gothic horror novel published in 1897. This book is written in epistolary style. That is, the text is in the form of notes, letters and documents written in space by the characters in the story. Among literary scholars, Dracula himself has become one of the most famous characters in popular culture, and there is little argument that this is not the most famous and influential work of vampire fiction ever written. . However, despite this, much of the background regarding the novel’s actual plot and characters remains obscured in the public consciousness as adaptations of the novel have distorted popular perceptions, and this It started with movies and stage productions.
The original Nosferatu was an unauthorized 1922 German film adaptation directed by F.W. Murnau, in which much of the plot and characters were condensed and reimagined. The film moved the action from England to Germany and changed the names of the entire cast, most famously changing Count Dracula to Count Orlok. This is a largely unsuccessful attempt to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. The 1924 Dracula play written by Hamilton Deane (and revised to the more famous version by John L. Balderston in 1927) similarly condensed the plot and cast, leaving all non-English parts removed and merged Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra into one character. Balderston’s iteration is named Lucy Seward. The play was the basis for Universal’s 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Legosi in the role of Dracula, which he had previously played on stage.
Some of the most notable deviations from the source material that became the default began with these early adaptations. Can vampires die from sunlight? It’s not in the book. Dracula is only weakened by the sunlight, but he walks around in it just fine. The 1922 film introduced the idea of vampires being killed by the sun. Is Dracula a gentle aristocrat who charms his victims? First appeared in a 1924 play. In the book, he initially appears decrepit and disgusting, and later transforms into a less monstrous figure, but is still not considered handsome or charismatic. Is Van Helsing an expert on vampires? That wasn’t the case until the 1931 film. In the novel, Van Helsing is just an eccentric professor who studies the occult and has never encountered a vampire before. However, while most versions now depict Van Helsing as Dracula’s nemesis and a skilled warrior against the supernatural, he is actually only second-guessing his ways in the books.
Dracula has no involvement in this book at all. His head was cut off and his heart was stabbed with a knife. But that’s the details. If you’re wondering where the Dracula adaptation really went wrong, it’s in the portrayal of the book’s two main female characters, Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra.
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu trailer stills
19th century women
As a story, Dracula has always been a group drama, but if there’s one character who deserves to be called the book’s main character, it’s Mina Harker. She does not appear in the first few chapters, but once she enters the story, she becomes the most important person in the fight against Dracula due to her intelligence, calmness, and loyalty to her friends and loved ones. Although she does not physically fight Dracula, she contributes to his defeat by compiling the letters and documents that make up the body of the book, providing the research material the heroes need to uncover Dracula’s weaknesses. Masu. She helps people with personal crises as they struggle to cope mentally with their circumstances. And even though she is attacked and mind-controlled by the Count, by force of will she directs their psychic connection to him and reveals his whereabouts to her companions. This is an act that directly leads to Dracula’s death.
Unfortunately, this version of Mina is not present in the adaptation. She often has her role reduced, merged or replaced with her best friend Lucy, or turned into a helpless (or worse, willing) victim. The last one happened in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, in which Winona Ryder played Mina. This version differs from the original, as she is defined not by her intelligence and moral fortitude, but by being a dim-witted maiden who falls in love with a count, since she is clearly the reincarnation of his long-lost wife. It completely betrays the character. What makes this particularly egregious is that in the book, Dracula forces Mina to drink his own blood against her will, an unmistakable metaphor for sexual assault. This means that the movie features a character who is raped by Dracula for all intents and purposes and who affectionately fawns over him. It’s completely reprehensible and completely misses the point of who Mina is.
Lucy Westenra has undergone similar treatment. In the books, she is defined by her innate goodness, a pure soul who is tragically destroyed and turned into a vampire by Dracula, and the three men who love her help her hunt down and destroy her. are forced to. In Coppola’s film, she is reimagined as a shameless flirt who pits suitors against each other and always speaks in sexual innuendo. By portraying Lucy this way, her sexuality becomes something she is punished for, turning her into a monster that must be subdued. As with Mina, it’s a complete misunderstanding of the characters’ original context and what role they are intended to play within the thematic framework of the story. It’s also downright strange to see female characters in books published in the 1890s being less regressive than those in film versions released a century later. Sadly, the new interpretation of Nosferatu doesn’t do much to change this.
Symphony of the Light
The new Nosferatu begins with Mina lookalike Ellen Hatter (Lily-Rose Depp) calling into the night, only for Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to respond. The awkward and uneasy relationship between the two forms the backbone of the story, and the film’s most interesting idea is that Eren is completely hated by how monstrous and disgusting this version of the character is. It means that it is not. From there, the film largely follows the novel’s basic plot outline, although character names from the 1922 film are used instead. However, as with Coppola’s film, the character traits of Ellen/Mina are not preserved. She almost screams and cries in the movie rather than being calm about herself. And, rather than being faithful by the book, she clearly betrays her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) with her desire for Orlok.
25 Best Vampire Movies of All Time
The movie tries to get around this by making Eren the character who “defeats” Orlok, but the way he does that undermines his choice of power. Eren sacrifices herself by inviting Orlok into her room and letting him eat her, keeping him there until the sun rises and kills him. However, the film does not show her (or anyone else) learning that sunlight will kill Orlok. The film assumes that the weakness is so prominent in popular culture that everyone knows about it. Also, when sunlight pours in through the window, Eren doesn’t forcefully hold Orlok down to make sure he gets the job done, he just caresses him gently. Orlok’s death happening like this just makes him look stupid. Didn’t he know the sun was rising? Questions about how this ending will play out prevent it from functioning as a meaningful subversion of previous Mina adaptations. It also leads to Eren’s death. That is, she, like Coppola’s Lucy, will be punished for her sexuality because she fulfilled her own desires and unwittingly unleashed Orlok on everyone.
To be fair to Eggers, it’s clear that his interest was more in remaking Murnau’s film than adapting Stoker’s book, but no filmmaker in many years has done the latter better. , it feels like a missed opportunity. How Terrence Fisher’s 1958 film starring Christopher Lee betrayed Jonathan Harker, and how John Badham’s 1979 film starring Frank Langella once again took the scene outside the UK. There’s no mention of whether it was cut or how Demeter’s last voyage was directed last year. Andre Øvredal took the great idea of adapting the Boat Chapter as a full movie, but ruined it by portraying Dracula as a generic slasher monster with almost no dialogue. It’s so ridiculous that this story has been adapted into stage and film so many times without any of the major works actually getting their hands on the original story. Perhaps one day we’ll see a great version of Stoker’s writing, but for now, the dream is as fantastical as the fog Dracula can transform into.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can trace his obsession with Blue Sky.
